Fishing: Here's some good news from NOAA

Charles Walsh

Updated 7:29 am, Sunday, March 10, 2013

An old guy who I used to run into while fishing for winter flounder in March off a dock near the Route 1 Housatonic River bridge used to say the official start of flounder fishing season was St. Patrick's Day (March 17) because "that's when the flatties start coming out of the mud." True or not, we caught a lot of those bug-eyed fish off that dock while the weather changed from lion to lamb.

I don't know if that old man is still around (I estimate he'd be about 110 years old), but if he is, he probably just spends the day sipping green beer in a local tavern. Sadly, those fabulous winter flats we used to catch from so easily have all but vanished. They are not impossible to catch, but you better be willing to put in a full day on the water just to take home the two 12-inch keepers allowed by state regulations.

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Short castsTROUT UNLIMITED BANQUET: There is still time to grab a ticket for the 36th annual banquet of the Nutmeg Chapter of Trout Unlimited. Reservations must be received before Friday. The banquet is set for Saturday, March 23, at the Restaurant at Tashua Knolls Gold Course. Reservation forms and additional details are available online at nutmegtrout.org.BOAT BANS: If your boat is longer than 26 feet, don't bring it to Candlewood Lake. The State Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has banned powerboats and sailboats exceeding that length from the lake unless special permission is granted.-- CHARLES WALSH

Happily, there are lots of other finned species to take up the slack left by the flounder's mysterious exit.

What with commercial codfish closures and rising water temps, good fishing news has been hard to come by lately, but as we begin another season of the fishing column, I am determined to put an upbeat face on the 2013-14 season.

The best news I could scout up this week comes out of a just-released report by National Oceanic & Atmospheric Agency's Fisheries Service. According to NOAA, in 2011, while the economy was still struggling to climb out of the recession, recreational and commercial fishing in the U.S. generated more than $199 billion in sales and supported 1.7 million jobs nationally.

We call that economic impact, the kind that makes politicians think twice before they start cutting support for fishing and its related industry.

The survey, titled "Fisheries Economics of the United States 2011," is published every two years.

Here are some of the report's other highlights:

• The commercial seafood industry generated $129 billion in sales impact in 2011, $37 billion in income impact and supported 1.2 million jobs.

• Recreational fishing (that's us) generated $70 billion in sales impact, $20 billion in income impact, and supported 455,000 jobs in 2011. When compared to 2010, the numbers rose in every area except for commercial seafood sales.

• California, Massachusetts, Florida, Washington and Alaska, in that order, enjoyed the highest total impact from fishing-related activity. Alaska had the highest income from commercial landing ($1.9 billion). Massachusetts was a distant second ($433 million).

While Connecticut's economic impact from commercial and recreational fishing was miniscule compared to the top 10 states, there are some interesting breakout stats for the state in the report. For example, a chart that compares the number of certain fish species Connecticut's recreational anglers harvested (killed) and released since 2002 reveals that 2005 was the best year for striped bass with 1,762,000 bass released and 157,000 killed. By comparison, in 2011, only 612,000 bass were released and 64,000 were killed.

Connecticut's recreational catch of bluefish hit its recent peak in 2008 when 1,144,000 choppers were released and 624,000 killed. In 2011, Connecticut anglers released 997,000 blues while killing 308,000.